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Sexuality of God
Have you heard the one about Stephen
Hawking and the pope? Some years ago the pope invited Hawking and other eminent scientists to a conference on cosmology in
the Vatican. The conference was convened in the hope that the papacy might avoid the kind of blunder it had made a few centuries
earlier by opposing Galileo. The papacy then had censured Galileo for teaching that the Earth was not the center of the universe
but revolved about the sun.
At length His Holiness pronounced, “OK, you Scientists may Investigate all of Creation
and Explore it in Whatever Way you Like; but the Moment of Creation, the Big Bang Itself, you Must Not Touch, for That Moment
belongs to the Creator Alone.”
At that, Hawking became a bit agitated. “Your Holiness,” he began, timidly, “I’ve
been working very hard on this new theory that unifies quantum mechanics and general relativity. I call it the Theory of
Everything. It is the breakthrough we’ve all been dreaming of. But, curiously, it predicts that no Creator is needed to
begin a universe.”
The pope’s jaw dropped. But after regaining composure he stated, imperiously, “You Natural Philosophers
think you are Bright, and in Some Respects you May Be, but in Important Matters I Judge you to be Slow Learners. Prepare
the Dungeon!”
This is a flowery (liberally exaggerated!) version of an anecdote Hawking includes in his popular book,
A Brief History of Time. In the book Hawking has much to say about laws of nature and how they account for the phenomena
of the universe so completely that they squeeze God out. As physical sciences grew in scope and power, God’s role in the
world shrank and may even have vanished. There’s nothing left for God to do, unless perhaps it’s still up to him to fire
up new universes.
This view presupposes that, if God acts in the world, he is restricted to bridging hypothetical
gaps in physical laws. And Hawking is implying there are no such gaps. This view is a clear example of the kind of thinking
that results when the atheistic principles of the scientific method become articles of faith. No matter what scientists or
philosophers may say, principles of the scientific method are useful for doing science but are not and can never become established
truths.
Nevertheless, the idea that laws of nature make God unnecessary has concerned people for a long time. Medieval
astrologer Pietro d’Abano, for example, according to historian Friedrich Heer in The Medieval World, claimed that miracles
were impossible because the stars rigidly determined everything.
If indeed interactions of all components of the
universe always rigidly obey physical laws and nothing else, then God is truly irrelevant. As we saw in the preceding chapter,
miracles, which by definition occur whenever God interacts with matter, are impossible in such a world.
Those who
know God know that he is not irrelevant. Yet many scientists find it easy to believe that, once the Big Bang occurred, everything
else followed of necessity because of properties built into matter. So if God really is relevant, how is he relevant? In
the evolution of galaxies, stars and life forms, did God have any role, or is his only role to interact spiritually with his
people at the very end?
From findings of science we know that, if God interacts at all, it is nearly always with
a gentle touch. That is, the great ages of galaxies, stars and planets and the great expanse of time required for the emergence
of the higher animals and plants are strong evidences, albeit circumstantial, that God does not often intervene in the world
to cause abrupt changes. The closer we look, the firmer the evidence that the various phases of the development of the universe,
including those of the Earth, all flowed continuously from one to the next. All forms of life, for example, appear genetically
related and very likely had a common origin. While God has been active in the creation, he apparently did not step in and
create new organisms out of dust from time to time to help evolution along.
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Now comes my view of God’s interaction
with the world, a view that many will find offensive, at least initially, but one that has the great merit of allowing God
to be relevant and at the same time of honoring the findings of science: God’s role as spirit is that of husband to wife,
where the wife is matter.
This view evolved primarily out of my close personal relationship with God over a period
now exceeding forty years. It is in no way a bright idea I snatched out of the blue. Had it been that sort of thing, I would
be unwilling to defend it or even bring it up. No one, of course, can climb inside my experience to judge for himself whether
or not I’ve reached sound conclusions, so I’ll approach the topic from other directions.
At the outset I know I cannot
make a convincing case for the skeptical. So why try? There are two reasons. First, the concept fits beautifully with the
rest of the theological picture I’m painting. Most important, the concept is true and valuable. Those who can share it with
me should advance a notch in their own relationship with God. Furthermore, the idea is hardly new. It appears in the Bible,
as we shall see, in more ways than one. It is just that the idea has not received the kind of emphasis that it needs in our
time.
Briefly, God as husband respects his wife’s integrity and would regard it as a violation to manipulate her
arbitrarily. His mode of interaction instead involves merging himself intimately with her, with her consent, as in a human
sexual relationship—except, of course, without human genitals. As with humans, the sex act creates. As with humans, the
fruits of the sexual activity do not appear immediately, but over time they take form and develop. Ultimately the kinds of
beings that God had in mind from the beginning emerge, beings made of matter who, as individuals, can know and respond to
God.
The picture is one of God interacting not just in the gaps, at imaginary points where physical laws cease to
apply or at certain instants when the world needs a special push from him, but interacting more or less continuously but unobtrusively
everywhere. The world, in other words, is in a sense God’s physical body. The particular sense in which the world is his
body is the sense in which a wife’s body belongs to a man in marriage.
There are difficulties in the marriage, however,
because evil spirits have staked claims on the wife as well. Actually, to some degree it is the evil spirits and the wife’s
knowledge of them and their works that make her a truly independent person capable of giving herself in a marriage relationship.
Without them God’s sexual experiences would be closer to autoeroticism or perhaps incest than to heterosexual love. Evil
spirits and their activities make it possible for the wife to be more objective about God than she would be able to be otherwise.
Now that both God and humans are in the picture, organic evolution is revealed not to have been a random process but
a process influenced through God’s gentle touch to produce beings who can interact with him as individuals. In this view
humans regain their status as the crowning achievement of God’s creative activity. In humans God has vessels that can be
made worthy of him.
Many scientists and philosophers will object to this view of God’s interaction with the world
on grounds that it violates Occam’s razor. William of Occam (ca. 1285-1349) frowned on “unnecessary multiplication of entities”
to explain anything. Scientists have found this principle of excising unnecessary complexity invaluable. In this case God
is the unnecessary entity. If you don’t absolutely need him, why bring him in?
First and most important, I know
him and I know that he interacts with me, so I cannot explain anything of fundamental importance to me without him.
As
for why scientists don’t need him in their work, they always focus their investigations narrowly on some specific system or
other and most of the time deliberately avoid trying to grasp the big picture. Scientific investigations might be compared
to studies of bone marrow by medical doctors in a living patient. No matter how exhaustive their investigations, the doctors
will never find evidence for the patient’s mind in the bone marrow. Any evidence they might come up with for the existence
of a mind could easily be explained by a theory that does not require a mind.
To see God in the world, it is necessary
to look as a whole person at wholes. The scientific method will never find God because it must break down every whole it
meets into its component parts. This process is what is meant by analysis. Scientists to be sure find the relationships
that ordinarily exist among components, but to find relationships is not the same as finding that God cannot influence those
relationships.
For some scientists and philosophers God is indeed an unnecessary entity, but I know that he acts
upon me. If God acts upon people, who are made of matter, he acts upon matter and is therefore relevant.
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What
does traditional religion say about God’s sexuality? Sexuality of gods in polytheistic religions was widely accepted, and
stories of gods’ sexual liaisons with human beings were cultural traditions. Christianity, of course, has always been above
such nonsense. I’m kidding. The gospels present Jesus as one who showed no personal interest in sexual relations with either
women or men. Yet he refers to himself more than once as the “bridegroom,” as informed Christians are well aware. John the
Baptist also called him a bridegroom. The appellation refers to no conventional marriage but to Jesus’ relationship with
the Church, the body of all people who have loved him down through time. Christian churches have acknowledged this marriage
throughout their history, but for most believers, especially Protestants, the concept has been of marginal importance.
It’s
not so marginal for some, however. On packing my daughter’s books while she was at college I stumbled upon her copy of The
Divine Romance by Gene Edwards. Employing the device of fictional storytelling, Edwards celebrates and explores in considerable
breadth the divine marriages of the Bible from a fundamentalist Christian perspective. God’s rationale for his own marriages,
according to Edwards, is not far from my own interpretation: “It is not good that God should be alone.”
The apostle
Paul exercised the divine marriage concept in several of his letters to fledgling Christian congregations. He often referred
to Christians as members of Christ’s body. He clarified what that meant in his letter to the Christians at Ephesus, where
he states that the husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the Church (Ephesians 5). He also writes in a
letter to the church at Corinth, “I joined you to one husband, presented [you as] a pure virgin to Christ” (2 Corinthians
11). Finally, the Revelation of John in its picturesque language portrays the relationship of Jesus to the Church as marriage
(Revelation 19, 21). The writer portrays the bride as “the holy city, Jerusalem,” created anew for heaven.
Despite
multiple references to the marriage of Christ and the Church, the New Testament descriptions of the relationship all seem
quite sexless, do they not? Although the church historically has taken the marriage at face value, as true marriage, it is
understandable that the concept has had little noticeable impact among believers. But the impact is there, and it will grow.
Parts of the Old Testament, especially the writings of certain prophets, use more sexually explicit imagery to portray
marriages of God with material beings. The divine marriages of the Old Testament are distinct from Christ’s marriage portrayed
in the New Testament. The marriage of Christ is one that is to come: The Church is the bride, not the wife. The marriage
of God with the descendants of Israel in the Old Testament is, in contrast, a marriage that went on long enough to get stale
to one of the partners.
The idea that God has multiple partners is one we must get used to; it is simply a fact and
is as true today as in Old Testament times. But in Old Testament times there was one wife above all others, the nation Judah,
the wife that eventually gave birth to Jesus.
Hosea was the first prophet on record to point out explicitly that
the relationship between God and his people was marriage. Perhaps if God’s wife, in this case the nation Israel, had remained
faithful, God would never have spoken so explicitly through Hosea about the marriage. God never advertised his sexuality.
But because Israel had been flagrantly unfaithful and yet close to him, he lost his temper and used words so blunt that even
children could not fail to understand.
“Hosea, go marry a whore,” God said in his rage, “I want your marriage to
show people what my own is like.” So Hosea married a whore and had children by her. “Ask your children to beg their mother
to stop her adultery,” God said. “Ask your countrymen to beg one another to stop their idolatry. Israel, my wife, has become
a whore. She said, ‘I will go after my lovers, who gave me fine gifts.’ She did not acknowledge that those gifts came from
me” (Hosea 1-2).
Jeremiah the prophet later spoke similar words to the nation of Judah. “Judah,” God said, “I remember
how devoted you used to be, how as my bride you loved me when we left Egypt. But what has become of us? You have this insatiable
craving for lovers! You are a wild animal in heat! You don’t even know your lovers, you offer yourself to any passing stranger.
You are like your sister, Israel, whom I divorced for less cause. I won’t divorce you, but admit you’ve done wrong and come
back to me” (Jeremiah 2-4).
The prophet Ezekiel, the one who “saw the wheels,” spoke even more fiercely than the
others. He tells of the low points in God’s rocky marriages in his chapters 16 and 23: fierce words of an irate husband!
To say that God lost his temper is, of course, an anthropomorphism. God’s unique perspective on history precludes
his losing control of himself, and the tone of the Bible passages itself does not suggest that he lost control. Nevertheless
those messages to his wives are fiercer and cut more deeply than anything else in the Bible.
God never explicitly
mentions his own sexual activity in the Bible, but through the prophets he acknowledges that his relationships are marriages,
and everyone knows that sexual intercourse is an integral part of marriage. So what form might sexual intercourse take when
one partner is an incorporeal spirit and the other is a nation of humans? Pretty bizarre, right? Actually, no.
In
the discussion of evil spirits and their interaction with people, we noted that a bond between a spirit and a human being
develops when the human behaves in ways that stimulate increased intimacy with the spirit. Something similar happens when
God interacts sexually with people. In both cases the people involved may not recognize that the feelings result from personal
interaction with spirits, but the interaction occurs nonetheless. One reason people may not recognize the person behind the
feelings is that each individual is only a part of the whole nation or congregation, and one part by itself does not have
adequate perspective to recognize what is going on with the body as a whole.
Writers of the Old Testament in many
places condemn worship of idols with sexual language. Idolatry, they said, was illicit sexual intercourse (e.g., Exodus 34:15-16;
Leviticus 17:7; Deuteronomy 31:16; Judges 2:17; 2 Kings 9:22; 1 Chronicles 5:25; 2 Chronicles 21:13; Psalms 106:36-39). God
through prophets says very little about his own sexuality, but if worship of false gods was sexual intercourse with evil spirits,
then worship of the true God logically would be sexual intercourse with God himself. The Bible never straightforwardly says
as much, but in portraying God as husband it makes the point by implication.
Why, one might ask, does the Bible not
come right out and say it if it is true? Two reasons come to mind. First, God, like most humans, never seems willing to
speak openly about his own sexuality. Sexual activity for him as for most humans is personal and private, a subject not suitable
for casual or even serious conversation unless there is a motive of overriding importance. In the period following the reign
of Solomon, when God’s wives, Judah and Israel, became flagrant adulteresses, God spoke more openly about his role as husband
than at any other biblical time. His wives’ behavior drove him to it.
The second reason the Bible does not put more
emphasis on God’s role as husband is that this role has involved large groups of people, such as nations or churches. It
is only when God spoke to those people as groups that the role of husband was important, and most of the time the Bible speaks
to people as individuals. To people as individuals Jesus’ portrayal of God as father is more relevant.
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The
overriding need for me to emphasize God’s sexuality at this time arises because findings of science keep many people from
thinking of God as father. God as father is a powerful authority figure who can create the world or change its course by
merely speaking a word. Science has shown that, most of the time, on a cosmic scale, God has not behaved in that mode. Most
of the time God has interacted with the world as a husband with his wife, respecting his wife’s integrity and influencing
her only with gentle touches.
Note that, when God is husband rather than father, the old problem of evil disappears.
Some people refuse to honor God because, “How could a powerful, loving God allow this or that terrible thing to happen?”
They cannot accept that God does not always intervene to deliver people from accidents, natural disasters, diseases and their
own folly. If God did so intervene, of course, he logically could never allow anyone to die or be born deformed, either;
and then people would complain if he did not make everyone perpetually young, rich and famous as well.
For God to
intervene in such ways would violate his wife’s integrity. When God does intervene in dramatic ways, as by the miracles of
Jesus, he usually does so through human instruments, so that the wife herself acknowledges and participates in the intervention.
Through human instruments God could take fairly drastic action while still respecting his wife’s integrity.
A belief
I live by is that God intervenes on behalf of all those he loves to make our lives as rich and meaningful as possible as long
as such intervention does not conflict with his broader objectives. We recognize that God indeed has objectives that go beyond
our personal welfare and that to satisfy these from time to time may require our physical suffering or deprivation. By this
principle those who love him can accept any challenge or hardship whatever, trusting that God is always meeting his objectives.
God is sexual, and he desires to bring into existence beings that can respond to him as individuals. Beings that
can respond to him will be “made in his image,” because a deeper rapport can exist between those who have much in common than
those who have little in common. Part of being made in the image of God thus includes being sexual. “God created man in
his own image...male and female....” (Genesis 1:27). Human sexuality derives from the sexuality of God.
Nevertheless,
sexuality is transitory. Jesus said that, ultimately, “people will neither marry nor be given in marriage” (Matthew 22:30).
Sexuality, then, endures only as long as the work of creation goes on. When the creation is complete to God’s satisfaction,
sexuality will lose its purpose.
Meanwhile, groups of people who surrender themselves to God in worship enter into
a relationship with him that is as sexual as when a woman surrenders herself to a man in a sexual relationship.
Christians
have long maintained that no human behavior is spiritually neutral; in everything one does, one worships either God or demons.
If this is true, it is particularly true of behavior accompanied by powerful emotions, because spirits by bonding with people
increase the intensity of their feelings. Hence even traditional Christianity holds that sexual relations involve worship.
What I am adding is that sexual behavior is often more purely worship than other kinds of behavior, and that worship of God
is sexual in nature.
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Sex and Worship
Although the Bible characterizes
some of God’s relationships as marriages, any connection between sex and worship is foreign to most Christians. A few of
the Bible’s authors go in the direction of making the connection, but they do so by implication only. Hence the idea that
worship might be sexual is certain to surprise and offend many Christians.
For most people sex is no longer a dirty
word, but it is still a word with such strong associations, both pleasant and unpleasant, that many are uncomfortable with
it. Sexual feelings grip people powerfully, rob them of control over themselves, drive them without understanding to actions
that can seem base and even bestial. All such attributes of sexual behavior make it an easy target for crude jokes. How
can anyone see a connection between such behavior and something as holy and spiritually lofty as worship of God? I would
have derided the idea myself if God had not taught me otherwise. Because of this potential for misunderstanding and offense,
it is useful to explore further the connection between sex and worship.
In what follows, my interpretation of what
is normative or characteristic in human sexual behavior derives from what I see is characteristic of God’s sexual behavior.
I am thus imposing an interpretation from above, not extracting one from below. Rather than conducting scientific investigations
to find out what human sexuality is like in all its various manifestations, I assert instead that human sexuality derives
from God’s sexuality, and its truest and deepest meanings are discernible only in terms of God’s sexuality.
It has
become common to look below ourselves, to the beasts of the field and forest, for an interpretation of our sexuality. Animals
do it, so we do it. The theory of evolution provides impetus for this perspective. What I am saying is that our focus needs
instead to be turned upward. What we do finds meaning not in what the beasts do but in what God does.
My approach
is thus similar to that of the apostle Paul. Paul’s model of human marriage came from what he perceived to be the relationship
between Christ and his bride, the Church. On that basis, along with other considerations, Paul proceeded to deduce rules
that he felt should govern the relationships between men and women, husbands and wives. As might be expected, he commonly
relegated women to inferior positions, a fact that has rankled many of the more competent and assertive Christian women, particularly
in modern times. Even churches that hold to biblical infallibility sometimes explain away or step gingerly around a few of
Paul’s statements on women.
My treatment is less dogmatic. The human psyche is so malleable, adaptable and variable
that it is difficult or impossible to state principles of human behavior that apply to everyone in a given category or even
to the same person at different times. While I feel confident delineating a norm based on God’s sexuality, I do not draw
specific conclusions about how individuals ought to behave towards one another. Nevertheless, I believe, if Christian men
and women pattern their relationships on this norm, their relationships are likely to be more fulfilling than if they do not.
God in creating us has arranged things so that behavior consistent with his behavior will in the end prove to be the most
rewarding.
People who love God acknowledge that he is above humans. But people with a wide knowledge of men and
women cannot with the same confidence assert that men are always above women. These days it is particularly easy to find
women more talented and accomplished in various fields than many men. This reality by itself, that God is clearly above humans
but men are not so clearly above women, makes it hazardous to extrapolate from the marriages of God to the marriages of individual
humans. Hence anything I say here about sexual behavior that sounds like a general principle is, once again, really only
an attempt to delineate a norm. The norm comes from God but cannot be applied rigidly and indiscriminately to individual
humans and their marriages.
One reason this norm may not seem as applicable to married couples in modern, developed
nations as it might have in earlier times is that women have improved their standing in the world, especially over the last
hundred years. Technological advances and the evolution of social structures have created environments in which women can
readily be valued for talents and abilities that are not directly related to their domestic service or roles in human reproduction.
Many women naturally and properly have taken advantage of new opportunities to acquire status outside the home, and this
status inevitably influences their relationships with men.
A more sinister reason that the norm may not seem applicable
is that many nations are becoming increasingly secular. The influence of religion in most parts of the world has diminished
greatly over the past hundred years. Those who know God know that “secular” does not mean “neutral”. A secular society is
one in which demonic influences have relatively free rein. We noted earlier that a characteristic of demonic relationships
is that they do not entail lasting commitment but exist to satisfy desires of the moment without regard to ultimate consequences.
Human societies have always had to struggle to overcome the undesirable consequences of such relationships and have often
instituted strong taboos or laws against them. In modern times these taboos in many places have become weak or nonexistent,
to the detriment of society.
That said, we now get to the business of delineating what is normative or characteristic
in human sexuality, and how that is related to worship of God. Stripped of the emotional and cultural paraphernalia of courtship,
the sex act between a man and a woman is characteristically an act of domination/submission. If the man is in control of
himself, the man dominates and the woman submits herself to him. Some describe sexual attraction as “two sets of glands calling
to one another”. In reality sexual interaction more often than not has social and psychological significance that far overrides
any such purely physiological significance, and the social significance is characteristically domination/submission.
In
an act of worship the worshiper surrenders herself to the object of worship and through intimate and submissive interaction
with him redefines herself in him. Why the worshiper should be female and the object of worship male is an important theme
of this chapter. Once again: In an act of worship the worshiper surrenders herself to the object of worship and through
intimate and submissive interaction with him redefines herself in him.
For example, it is common for people to acknowledge
upon conversion to Christianity that they have become new persons, and it is common for a woman upon getting married to take
her husband’s surname. In both cases people redefine themselves. Apart from acts of worship the Christian’s redefining would
be a mere formality, just as apart from sex acts the woman’s name change would be a formality. It is through worship in the
one case and sexual intercourse in the other that profound changes take place.
A common sentiment among couples in
America about to be married is that they want their relationship to be an “equal partnership”. Domination/submission seems
to be at odds with equal partnership. Yet equal partnership in marriage sounds like a goal worth striving for even to me.
It is worth striving for as long as the equality has to do with administrative aspects of the relationship, the sharing of
tasks, responsibilities, assets, etc. Domination/submission doesn’t necessarily apply to such aspects. It applies rather
to the creation of the unity of persons in the marriage, the “one flesh” aspect, which happens through sexual intercourse.
While true worship is sexual, there are forms of human behavior called worship that are not sexual. Hero worship
is one example. Hero worship is similar to true worship in some ways. For example, a boy who “worships” a professional athlete
psychologically surrenders parts of himself to the athlete and attempts to define those parts in terms of the athlete. People
often say such things as “the boy idolizes the athlete” or, in other settings, “the boy idolizes his father” or some other
adult. Even though we call such behavior worship and speak in terms of idols, we recognize that the behavior is not true
worship, and the admired persons are not really false gods.
True worship in principle involves the worshiper’s whole
person. Hero worship involves only restricted aspects or functions of the boy, not his whole person, and that is why it is
not sexual. Sexual interaction involves the whole person. Hero worship involves simply taking a role model, a kind of behavior
common in immature people that helps them define themselves. A person can surrender herself in true worship, in true sexual
intercourse, only if she has already defined herself. She cannot properly redefine herself in terms of her object of worship
unless she has already defined herself. Hero worship is simply part of a person’s initially defining himself and hence cannot
be sexual.
Parental hands that in caring for an infant lovingly touch it on all parts of its body help the infant
define itself, as does cradling in arms and holding the infant close. In a similar way a man by touching his wife on all
parts of her body and by holding her in his embrace helps her to redefine herself. The touch proclaims, “You are loved, and
you are mine” far more compellingly than mere words.
The young child does not think of its parents’ touch while it
is happening as something to help it define itself. Neither does the wife ordinarily think of her husband’s touch as something
to help her redefine herself. But the defining and the redefining nevertheless happen, when love is true. The spiritual
significance we understand by analogy with the love of God: When God engulfs us in our worship over the years we see that
we redefine ourselves in him.
In worship as in sex there are obviously different degrees of surrender and submission.
No worshiper has ever given herself fully to God in any single act of worship, just as no woman has given herself fully to
a man in any single sex act. Both worship and sex imply total surrender in principle, but in fact total surrender is an ideal
that, most of the time, worshipers only strive for but never achieve. In worship as in sex the acts themselves can be and
often are superficial, involving only bodies, not minds, hearts or spirits. Many bodies have sat in formal worship services
while the minds were out playing or working.
(chapter continued on next page)
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